VIKRAM
As a rule, Vikram ran only when he was furious. As it so happened, he was almost always furious. Every day he treaded the threadbare line between livid and lucent. There was horror in knowing that he was only ever meant to be a puppet king. And there was hope in knowing that he was capable of so much more. When he ran, those sticky intangibles—title, birth, expectations and resentments—couldn’t cling to him.
He was simply moving too fast.
The vetala cackled, roping bony arms around his neck.
“Faster, donkey! Faster!” he screeched.
Vikram knew what the Grotto would show, which memories it would pluck from his mind and spin into spiteful sylphs. It took years of practiced charm to erase the boy that the Ujijain Empire grudgingly accepted. Only his father remembered the day he was found. No one remembered the wilting blue flowers in his hand, or the way he had clung to the brittle, colorless blossoms until they crumbled to dust. No one chose to see. It was the way of royalty.
He was nearly at the cave, dry winds burning in his lungs, when he heard it:
“Beta?”
I knew you would come for me.
The vetala cackled and whispered in his ear: “Protect the head, protect the head.”
Vikram clapped one hand over his eye, but a tug in his heart stalled his feet. He had steeled his heart against seeing her. But hearing her? He hadn’t trained his heart against the longing to curl around the sound of her voice. Whenever his mother spoke or sang, the sky brightened. Even the stars would drift a little closer to catch the silver of her voice.
“My child, have you forgotten me? I waited a long time for you to come back,” said his mother. “You wanted to surprise me. Remember?”
“Yes,” he said, hoarsely.
“I forgive you, for what you did to me. Won’t you embrace me, my son?”
Vikram looked up from his feet, and found himself at the edge of a dusty cliff. He stumbled back, his nose filling with the sharp scent of pine. A net of tree limbs danced above him like laced fingers.
“Beta,” breathed his mother. “Come to me.”
He wanted to. Gods, he wanted to. But something stayed his hand. Hand. His mother stood with her arms folded across her chest. A burst of blue caught his eye. Blue blossoms. It was the blue tingeing her neck at the bottom of a cliff, her mouth full to the teeth with rocks. He frowned. Impossible.
The image burst.
He stumbled out of the mist, his head ringing as the vetala screamed: “—fool of a boy!” He started running again, heart racing, to get to the other side. With only one eye open, he turned and found the thing from the Undead Grotto stumbling after him.
“Come back, Vikram!” it called in his mother’s voice.
He ran blindly into the mist, dodging thin tree limbs. But his foot slipped just as a boulder draped in mist lurched into sight. The last thing he saw was the gravelly dirt rising to meet him.
*
Vikram woke to being dragged across the uneven ground of a darkened cave. Small threads of light stitched their way across the rock, casting a thin and stingy illumination. The vetala squatted on his chest, and cackled when Vikram tried—and failed—to shove him off.
Gauri’s silhouette caught the dim light. Dirt streaked her arms, but she carried herself like a queen reclaiming her country. She was also, to his infinite loathing, hauling him around like a sack of fruit.
He groaned. Do I make you laugh, Universe? Once, when he was ten, he attempted to fly by attaching silk scarves to his arms and leaping from a tree. It did not work. When he was fifteen, he dressed like a courtesan to sneak into the harem. He ended up appearing too convincing to a palace guard and was forced to throw off his silks and punch the man. All things considered, this was not the most shameful thing he had endured.
But it was certainly one of them.
“Wakey! Wakey!” shouted the vetala, slapping his face. “I jumped off because I thought you were a husk of a thing. But the pretty monster came back for you.”
He wanted to strangle the creature. It would have been far better to feign unconsciousness and just allow himself to be dragged across the cave. Maybe the Universe would have smiled down at him and knocked his head against a rock. He twisted out of Gauri’s unnervingly strong grip. She dropped his leg with little ceremony.
“Get up,” she said.
“I appreciate your concern and my mind is perfectly intact. Thank you for inquiring.”
He wobbled to a stand and snuck a glance into her eyes before breathing a sigh of relief. The vetala’s enchantment had worn off. Their memories had retreated back into their skin. Still, he wondered what she had seen in that Undead Grotto. Her face looked pinched in the cave light, her lips pressed tight. Now that her hands were free, her fingers twisted protectively around her necklace. When he looked at her under the enchantment, he had seen a girl who wore a hundred faces and never smiled in any of them. He’d glimpsed a memory of a princess who hid a sparrow with a broken wing in her room. He’d seen her clutch her blue necklace tight to her throat and drop her shoulders when no one was looking. Who was she?
The vetala raised his arms like the most grotesque infant. “Pick me up.”
Grumbling, Vikram swung the creature onto his back. The vetala promptly rested his chin on Vikram’s head with a delighted sigh. There was nothing else to do but follow the light. As they walked, Vikram sensed the enchantment of the Otherworld buried in the cave silt. It was subtle. Like moonlight soaking fruit trees, storm clouds crouching over palace spires and watchful eyes blinking open in the dusk. And it stirred him awake and wide-eyed.
“Thank you,” he said, partially to break the silence, but mostly because he truly meant the words. “You went back for me.”
“We need two to participate in the Tournament. And the vetala”—she jerked a disdainful nod at the creature—“would be of little use. So don’t thank me. I did it for myself.”
The vetala brought his head to Vikram’s ear. “I heard her heart leap from its cage of bones when I said you were dead.”
His own heart did a strange flip. They’d crossed through a Grotto where their own memories had been treacherous, but all he remembered was the sound of her laugh when he asked if they should race. Her laugh was low and throaty, as if rusty with disuse. He hadn’t been able to shake it from his mind.
“Vikram!” shouted Gauri.
His head snapped up. A moment from his toes, a massive rip in the cave floor reared to meet them. He ground his heels into the floor, his stomach turning as if he had fallen through the hole. Smack. The vetala brought his bony elbow down sharply on Vikram’s head. His body jerked forward, just as the vetala shoved Gauri.
“Jump! This way, cowards!” the vetala shouted.